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ACPP executive director Kimble Forrister issued the following statement Thursday, June 4, 2015, in response to the Alabama Legislature’s passage of a General Fund budget that slashes vital services like Medicaid, mental health care and public safety:

“This shortsighted General Fund budget would weaken Alabama’s economy and our future. Services like Medicaid, mental health care and public safety boost our quality of life and provide the backbone for economic growth. But Alabama has cut these services to the bone in recent years, and this budget would make the situation even worse. Children, seniors and our most vulnerable neighbors would suffer as a result.

“Alabama simply can’t afford these damaging cuts. It’s time to stop cutting the services that make our state a better, healthier place to live and to start investing in Alabama’s future.”

“The House’s budget would weaken Alabama’s economy and our future. Services like Medicaid, mental health care and child care boost our quality of life and provide the backbone for economic growth. But Alabama has cut these services to the bone in recent years, and the House budget would make the situation even worse. Children, seniors and our most vulnerable neighbors would suffer as a result.

“Alabama simply can’t afford the cuts in the no-new-revenue General Fund budget. It’s time to stop cutting the services that make our state a better, healthier place to live and to start investing in Alabama’s future.”

We all want to live in a healthy, secure and prosperous state. Alabama is taking important steps toward that goal now, but deep General Fund budget cuts could undo that progress.

Medicaid’s new regional care organizations will keep patients healthier while cutting costs. Prison system improvements will protect Alabamians while lowering costs and helping former inmates transition back into their communities. Investing in these changes now will save money later.

We’re at a crossroads in Alabama. Cutting vital services is the wrong path.

The devastating cuts in the no-new-revenue General Fund budget proposal would force us to abandon our Medicaid and corrections improvements. And without new revenue, Alabama faces deep service cuts that could make the state a worse place to live for years to come.

Cuts to Medicaid, which covers one in five Alabamians, would top $300 million. That would force the program to end coverage of vital services like adult eyeglasses, prosthetics, hospice care and outpatient dialysis. It also likely would lead to even fewer doctors serving Medicaid patients, most of whom are children, seniors, and people with disabilities.

The costs for Alabama’s children would be real. Cuts to the Department of Human Resources (DHR) would make Alabama the first state to end its Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. That would eliminate cash assistance for more than 30,000 children living in deep poverty, as well as uniforms, car repairs and other job readiness assistance for their parents.

DHR cuts also would end child care benefits for 15,000 children. That could hurt our state’s economy by forcing thousands of working parents to quit their jobs. More than $340 million in child support payments would be risk if DHR ends collection services, and hundreds of seniors would lose adult day care services that allow them to live independently.

Mental health funding cuts would harm more than 25,000 Alabamians by reducing or eliminating community-based mental illness and intellectual disability services. That would reduce independence for thousands of Alabamians. The cuts also could cost hundreds of people their jobs by forcing them to stay home to care for family members who lose crucial support services. In addition, severe mental health cuts could land Alabama back in federal court.

Deep General Fund cuts would have serious public safety implications as well. Nearly a fourth of Alabama’s state troopers would be laid off. The prison system, which already operates at nearly twice its designed capacity, would close two facilities. That would mean even more overcrowding and an even greater chance of a federal takeover of the state’s prison system.

More than 1,100 state workers would lose their jobs, including more than 600 court employees. That likely would force courts to close at least two days a week, meaning longer wait times for criminal trials or restitution cases.

This is no way to invest in our state’s future. Alabama needs new revenue to end the chronic budget shortfalls that are holding us back. The General Fund needs a sustainable revenue stream to support Medicaid, corrections, mental health care and other vital services. Raising the cigarette tax and raising the state sales tax on automobiles to 4 percent – the same as we pay on groceries – would be two good places to start.

If we want a better Alabama tomorrow, we need to start building it today.

A bill that would expand tax credits under the Alabama Accountability Act (AAA) passed 20-14 in the state Senate on Tuesday night. SB 71, sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston, now goes to the House. Below are six major aspects of the AAA that would change under SB 71:

(1) More tax credits would be available. Businesses and individuals can get tax credits for donations to organizations that grant scholarships to help eligible students attend private schools under the AAA. Current law caps the total amount of such credits at $25 million a year, but SB 71 would raise the cap to $30 million. (Marsh originally sought to lift the cap to $35 million, but he accepted an amendment by Sen. Greg Reed, R-Jasper, to reduce that amount.) The bill also would erase the current $7,500 annual limit on scholarship tax credits for individuals and let taxpayers claim credits against their 2014 taxes for donations made this year.

(2) Scholarship sizes would be limited. AAA scholarships could be no more than $6,000 a year for elementary school students, $8,000 a year for middle school students and $10,000 a year for high school students under SB 71. Arise’s Kimble Forrister suggested during Senate committee testimony on March 11 that lawmakers limit the size of AAA scholarships “to ensure that private schools keep tuition costs in line with other schools in the market, not boost tuition to get these dollars.”

(3) The income limit for scholarship eligibility would drop. SB 71 would reduce the income eligibility limit for AAA scholarships from its current level – 150 percent of the median household income, or nearly $65,000 in Alabama – to 185 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), or about $44,000 for a family of four. Forrister on March 11 recommended a limit of 185 percent FPL, which is the threshold for eligibility for reduced-price school meals, as a way “to more precisely target educational scholarships to low-income children.” (Marsh’s original bill would have set the limit at 200 percent FPL.) Scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs) would have to re-evaluate students’ eligibility every other year.

(4) “Failing school” would have a different meaning. Another big difference under SB 71 would be a change in the AAA’s definition of “failing school.” The bill would deem a public school to be “failing” if it is “listed in the lowest 6 percent of public K-12 schools based on the state standardized assessment in reading and math” or if the state school superintendent designates it as one. Students zoned for “failing” schools would have first priority for AAA scholarships until July 31 of each year, when any remaining scholarship money could go to eligible students living anywhere in Alabama.

(5) Participating schools and groups that grant AAA scholarships would face additional requirements. SB 71 would require SGOs to report quarterly on how many scholarships they give, as well as how many of them go to students who were zoned for “failing” schools or who already attended private schools. Participating schools would have to give state achievement tests, be accredited within three years and disclose tuition rates online before each semester begins.

(6) Unspent scholarship money would be returned to public education. SGOs would have to use any scholarship funds on hand at the start of a calendar year by no later than June 30 of the following year. Under Marsh’s bill, any such money not spent on AAA scholarships by then would go to the state Department of Education to help support “underperforming” schools.

“It’s past time to rein in high-cost payday lending. The proposed new federal regulations that President Obama talked about in Birmingham today would be a big step toward keeping consumers out of debt traps in Alabama and across the country.

“The safeguards that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is considering would make life better for thousands of families in Alabama. A mandatory cooling-off period after repeated loans would protect borrowers and encourage responsible lending. It’s also heartening to see a proposal aimed at taking into account borrowers’ ability to repay loans.

“As promising as these proposals are, work remains to be done. The CFPB should work to require all payday and title lenders to evaluate borrowers’ repayment ability. And the most important step – reining in the triple-digit annual interest rates on these loans – requires action from our state leaders. By capping these rates at 36 percent, Alabama lawmakers can strengthen our communities and protect families from the high costs of high-cost lending.”

It’s the latest verse of a decades-old song: Alabama faces yet another funding shortfall next year for vital services like Medicaid, mental health care and corrections. Here are four things to know about the budget challenges facing the Legislature during the 2015 regular session that began Tuesday.

(1) Alabama’s revenues for the budgets that fund education, health care and other services still haven’t returned to pre-recession levels.

Alabama has two major state budgets: the Education Trust Fund (ETF), which pays for K-12 and higher education, and the General Fund (GF), which provides a major chunk of the support for vital non-education services, including Medicaid, mental health care, corrections and public safety. The picture that revenue officials painted for each on Tuesday was bleak.

Economic struggles during and after the Great Recession hammered both budgets, and neither has seen revenues return to pre-recession levels. GF receipts last year were down 15.5 percent since 2008, according to the Legislative Fiscal Office (LFO), and ETF appropriations this year are down 12.2 percent from their 2008 level. Alabama’s K-12 cuts since 2008 are the nation’s second worst, while our higher education cuts are the nation’s fifth worst. Alabama’s unemployment rate is improving, but revenues still aren’t growing nearly enough to undo the damage wrought by the Great Recession.

(2) The General Fund shortfall is persistent, and it’s not going away on its own.

The picture is especially bleak for the GF. Alabama’s education budget draws most of its money from state sales taxes and individual income taxes, which grow as the economy improves. But the GF relies on a hodgepodge of other revenue sources, most of which are slow to grow even during boom times.

That leaves the GF with a structural deficit, meaning revenue growth is not strong enough to keep pace with ordinary cost growth for vital services like Medicaid, mental health care and corrections. Without new GF revenue, these services continually will remain at risk of massive cuts.

How bad could the cuts for Medicaid, mental health care and other GF services get without new revenue? Perhaps most dramatically, failure to address the GF shortfall could spell disaster for Medicaid, which provides health coverage for one in five Alabamians and already has been cut to the bone of federally required coverage provisions. Even small further cuts could endanger lives.

GF cuts could mean even shorter staffing for the state’s overcrowded prison system, which operates at nearly twice its designed capacity. It also could mean fewer state troopers on the highways, more trial delays, longer lines to renew a driver’s license, or long waiting periods for many families seeking ALL Kids health coverage for their children.

Next year’s GF shortfall will be $264 million, according to Executive Budget Office (EBO) estimates. That would be a 14 percent drop in a perennially underfunded budget that already struggles to fund barebones service levels.

But the funding challenges don’t end there. EBO’s Bill Newton said Tuesday that Alabama also needs an additional:

$155 million to maintain current service levels for Medicaid and corrections,

$63.5 million to cover public safety costs that now are being covered by a transfer from the state’s road and bridge money,

$32.5 million to begin repaying the $161.6 million that the state borrowed from the GF’s rainy day account and must restore by 2020. (So far, Alabama hasn’t repaid a dime.)

Add it all up and it comes to $541 million in new GF revenue needs. That’s the amount that Gov. Robert Bentley proposes to raise with a mix of tax increases and loophole closures. “We must break the cycle of budget shortfalls year after year after year,” Bentley said Tuesday night during his State of the State address. “We must have adequate means.”

(4) Taxing low-income Alabama families deeper into poverty is not the way to cure our funding woes.

Alabama’s tax system is upside down. Low- and middle-income families pay twice as much of their income in state and local taxes as the top 1 percent of earners do. It’s an imbalanced structure that makes it harder for low-income families to escape poverty and leaves them with less money for the consumer spending that fuels economic growth. The main driver of this upside-down tax system? High sales taxes, especially on groceries and other necessities that account for a big share of low-income families’ household budgets.

Significantly, Bentley’s plan would not increase taxes on food, clothing or over-the-counter drugs. Instead, the governor proposes to raise more than $400 million by increasing the state’s cigarette tax and sales tax on automobiles. Bentley’s proposal would boost the cigarette tax from 42.5 cents per pack to $1.25 per pack and would increase the state sales tax rate on automobiles (now 2 percent) to match the 4 percent rate that applies to other consumer goods.

The rest of the new revenue would come from a mix of business tax increases and loophole closures. (One proposal is for Alabama to adopt combined reporting, which would treat corporations and their subsidiaries as one corporation for tax purposes. You can learn more about combined reporting here.)

Strong investments in services like education, Medicaid and public safety promote economic growth and improve our state’s quality of life. By funding those investments without raising taxes on necessities like food and clothing, Alabama can give everyone a better opportunity to get ahead in life.